lysistrata housing prices part 2
Ten men and ten women of average looks walk into a meat market bar in Shanghai. Since they are in China the men must use crass displays of wealth and status to attract mates, and each expect to gain 500,000Y of status from marrying (at least their parents will stop bothering them.) These will be split evenly between the two partners in a 50:50 split. Harmony ensues.
If instead there are 10 men and 9 women, as a result of Momma and Pappa Zhou slavishly adhering to cultural taboos that demand production of a male offspring, the results change dramatically: one man will be unpaired, and if everything is equal and he is rational (and wants p00n), he should be willing to spend all of his surplus to securing the affections of a woman. This quickly reduces men’s payoff to just over zero, and women gain 499,999Y from the exchange. Harmony does not ensue as the unpaired male must resort to a selective combination of World of Warcraft and pillow marriage.
Several ‘long-term-mating’ equilibriums will emerge among different social strata. Yuppie urbanites will find a relatively equal gender balance, since they need marriage and children for status. The ultra-wealthy will enjoy multiple partners as the rewards to being an extremely high status male go up, so also will the effort that goes into acquiring the attention of an extremely high status male. Very poor rural migrants will be left with an even worse gender imbalance, and move into some sort of sharing arrangement with lower status females.
For Chinese men, a house is a very important asset in attracting a woman, and not unreasonably as it represents stability amid a rapidly transitioning economy with no real social safety net. Previously I’ve asserted that the link between getting-some (and having a family, I guess) was not that strong, since the low-status men group wouldn’t be in much of a position to afford houses anyway. This paper presents convincing evidence to the contrary, as household savings rates are higher in provinces with higher gender imbalances. A summary:
“The increased pressure on the marriage market in China might induce men and parents with sons to do things to make themselves more competitive,” Wei says. “Increasing savings is one logical way to do that, to the extent that wealth helps to increase a man’s competitive edge. Parents increase household savings mostly by cutting down their own consumption.”
… “We find not only that households with sons save more than households with daughters in all regions,” Wei says, “but that households with sons tend to raise their savings rate if they also happen to live in a region with a more skewed sex ratio.”
Calling something an ‘inflated asset’ and ‘bubble’ requires an a-priori notion of what a non-distortionary equilibrium would produce. If gender imbalances are affecting competition, and as a result, reservation prices for apartments, there will be considerable skew vis-a-vis models that consider income alone.
In one of his stand-up routines, Dave Chappelle once said something to the effect of “men don’t like nice houses or cars, women do. If we didn’t need a big house to get laid, we’d all be sleeping in boxes.” Hehe.
Would you estimate that the average Chinese woman “knows her place” in the society?
That is, this hypothetical less-desirable/lower class woman who will become mistress to multiple lower class fellows–might she not shun their affections in hopes of scoring it big with a more desirable male of a higher social strata/gold dig? If she succeeds, I suppose the alpha male will be collecting his multiple partners, as you said. Or, will the lower class woman usually seek out/accept only lower class partners?
In a certain neighboring country, I have observed a.)that many lower-income girls wait too long for their dream upper-class husband and end up old and miserable (down here, 30 is nearly to late to wed) and that b.)I rarely see a pretty girl who seems to be struggling financially (the well-to-do guys would seem to scoop up the hot chicks).
This leads me to my second question–when you speak of desirable women, in the context of Shanghai culture (or perhaps the whole of China, in general), are these desirable based on their social position, or are they desirable simply from a “hot or not” viewpoint?
[...] Meanwhile, well-off poor local friends are losing money hand over fist, when all they wanted to do was settle down and marry a nice lady. Boo. [...]